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Curators' Introduction to Zurbarán

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Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their Zurbaran exhibition. I’d been to the show the day before and loved it so it was still fresh in my mind when Francesca Whitlum-Cooper and Daniel Ralston, led us though it explaining the theme of each room and introducing the main works in the show. They talked us through the artist’s early career from which no work survives then described the works he painted on his return to Seville in the 1620s including this mysterious picture of “The Apparition of St Peter and St Peter Nolasco”. They went on to the rooms of works for the religious orders including a massive altarpiece for a church just outside Cadiz, paintings of single saints including the gallery’s own wonderful St Francis, a look at subjects which he repeated, work for the royal court and to be exported to the America’s, still-lives by him and his son and finally works for private devotion from his later years. This was a good comprehensive introducti...
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Banksy : Blind Patriotism

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Surprising statue in Waterloo Place off Pall Mall by Bansky. I say surprising as in true Bansky fashion it appeared overnight. I popped to see in it case it doesn't hang around and, as it's made of fibre glass, I'm not sure how well it will stand up to the elements. I joined about 50 people gazing and taking selfies. It looks impressive in the space and I took it as an anti-Reform comment and a warning against striding forward with a nationalist idea but blinded by that doctrine to the subtleties of the situation but that might just be me writing on the day of the local elections. From photos I had assumed it had a matt bronze like finish but in fact it had subtle white/grey highlights which make it more visible and distinct. Closes? Who knows! Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard
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Zurbarán

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Stunning exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on the 17th century Spanish artist Zurbaran. I love Zurbaran and had been looking forward to this show and it didn’t disappoint. The monumental   work looked amazing in the space and was given room to breathe. It was shown in a simple way which evoked the religious settings in which it would have originated. I loved the stark Crucifixion scenes set against black and the single figure saints reminiscent of Spanish polychrome wood sculptures. It was moving to see three panels of a massive altarpiece reunited. There was a beautiful room of still-lives by Zubaran alongside those of his son. It was a visceral moment when you realised his son had died in a plague aged just 29. The most surprising piece in the show was a huge painting of a head. Measuring about 6ft sq from a distance it was striking but I assumed it was an enlargement of a face from a painting but no it is, as described in the show, a colossal head, recently as...
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A Baroque star : The life and work of Josefa de Óbidos

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Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on the 17th century Portuguese artist, Josefa de Obidos. Carmen Rippolles from the University of Oregan who has recently published a book on Josefa introduced her, taking us through her life and art. She placed her as an artist of the Counter-Reformation influenced by Spain but creating a Baroque style for Portugal. I had never come Josefa before so it was fascinating to learn bout a new artist and see work that was unfamiliar to me. She worked across genres and medium but did create large altarpieces as well as small devotional works on copper and still-lives.
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From Canvas to Canon: Six Texts That Shaped Art History

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Excellent online six week course from the National Gallery examining six major texts on art from Vasari to John Berger. Amy Mechowski led us through the course with a format of her giving a lecture on the book and the author then inviting a speaker who has reacted to the work either via art or writing. This was a really good grounding in art historical thinking and the format led you to think more widely around the subject.  The books were : * Giorgio Vasari’s “Lives of the Artists” 1550 * Charles Baudelaire's “The Painter of Modern Life” 1863 * Ernst Gombrich’s “The Story of Art” 1950 * Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” 1936 * Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971 * John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” 1972   Guest speakers were: * Jenny Graham from the University of Plymouth who discussed how Vasari created the canon of artists and established the idea of what an artists should be. She then t...
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A History of Sex in Victorian Britain and the British Empire

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Intriguing lecture at the National Portrait Gallery using works from the gallery to talk about sex in the Victorian era. Catherine Philips of The University of Bristol introduced us to a number of radical Victorian thinkers both campaigning for rights of sex workers of the time or introducing laws to limit sexual freedoms starting with Charles 'Boatswain' Smith, a Baptist minister in Stepney who established a refuge for sex workers, educating them to be domestic servants and finding them jobs with families moving out to the colonies. She moved on to Josephine Butler and Dadodhal Naoroji who fought to overturn the Contagious Diseases Acts and Annie Besant who republished a pamphlet of sexual education for which she was charged under the Obscene Publications Act. She then looked at Henry Labouchere who introduced the law to criminalise all male homosexual activity in the UK and Sir Richard Francis Burton who wrote about sexual practices he came across when travelling and t...
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Samurai

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Intriguing exhibition at the British Museum examining the history of the Samurai. It was a beautifully designed show and covered from their origins in medieval Japan's civil wars through to the 19th century when they had become the elite, cultured ruling class. It also looked at their myths and l egacy. My only moan is, that as ever at the British Museum, the labels were quite long and wordy creating log jams partly because they were set low so if anyone leaned over to look at an object they blocked them. Add to that the fact that quite often they were a distance from the item they were discussing so you had to play a game to match the object to the label. There were some beautiful objects and plentiful use of intricate painted scrolls and prints. I think my favourite object was this charming small dish dated 1700-50 which I felt could be a contemporary shop. I also loved a book described as an I-Spy book for processions to enable people to identify the different clans as th...
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